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Copytext: Fathers and Children,
translated from Russian to English by Richard Hare.
Translation copyright 1948 by Hutchinson & Co.,
Publishers, Ltd. (but not renewed, so entered the
public domain in the U.S. in 1977.) Reprinted 1960 in Rinehart
Editions paperback (No. 17) with 1948 introduction by
Ernest J. Simmons.

Chapter 1

"WELL, PYOTR, STILL NOT IN SIGHT?" WAS THE
QUESTION ASKED ON
20th May, 1859,
by a gentleman
of about forty, wearing a dusty overcoat and
checked trousers, who came out hatless into the
low porch of the posting station at X. He was
speaking to his servant, a chubby young fellow
with whitish down growing on his chin and with dim
little eyes.

The servant, in whom everything--the turquoise
ring in his ear, the hair plastered down with
grease and the polite flexibility of his
movements--indicated a man of
the new improved generation,
glanced condescendingly along the road
and answered, "No, sir, definitely not in
sight."

"Not in sight?" repeated his master.

"No, sir," replied the servant again.

His master sighed and sat down on a little
bench. We will introduce him to the reader while
he sits, with his feet tucked in, looking
thoughtfully around.

His name was Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov. He
owned, about twelve miles from the
posting station,
a fine property of two hundred
serfs
or,
as he called it--since he had arranged the division
of his land with the peasants--a
"farm"
of nearly five thousand acres. His father, a
general in the army, who had served in
1812,
a crude, almost illiterate, but good-natured type of
Russian, had stuck to a routine job all his life,
first commanding a brigade and later a division,
and lived permanently in the provinces, where by
virtue of his rank he was able to play a certain
part. Nikolai Petrovich was born in south Russia,
as was his elder brother Pavel, of whom we shall
hear more; till the age of fourteen he was
educated at home, surrounded by cheap tutors,
free-and-easy but fawning adjutants, and all the
usual regimental and staff people. His mother, a
member of the Kolyazin family, was called Agatha
as a girl, but as a general's wife her name was
Agafoklea Kuzminishna Kirsanov; she was a
domineering military lady, wore gorgeous caps and
rustling silk dresses; in church she was the first
to go up to the cross, she talked a lot in a loud
voice, let her children kiss her hand every
morning and gave them her blessing at night--in
fact, she enjoyed her life and got as much out
of it as she could. As a general's son, Nikolai
Petrovich--though so far from brave that he had
even been called a
"funk"--was intended,
like his brother Pavel, to enter the army; but he
broke his leg on the very day he obtained a
commission and after spending two months in bed he
never got rid of a slight limp for the rest of his
life. His father gave him up as a bad job and let
him go in for the civil service. He took him to
Petersburg
as soon as he was eighteen and placed
him in the university there. His brother happened
at the same time to become an officer in a guards
regiment. The young men started to share a
flat
together, and were kept under the remote
supervision of a cousin on their mother's side,
Ilya Kolyazin, an important official. Their
father returned to his division and to his wife
and only occasionally wrote to his sons on large
sheets of grey paper, scrawled over in an ornate
clerkly handwriting; the bottom of these sheets
was adorned with a scroll enclosing the words,
"Pyotr Kirsanov, Major-General."
In 1835
Nikolai Petrovich graduated from the university,
and in the same year General Kirsanov was put on
the retired list after an unsuccessful review, and
came with his wife to live in Petersburg. He was
about to take a house in the Tavrichesky Gardens,
and had joined the English club, when he suddenly
died of an apoplectic fit. Agafoklea Kuzminishna
soon followed him to the grave; she could not
adapt herself to a dull life in the capital and
was consumed by the boredom of retirement from
regimental existence. Meanwhile Nikolai
Petrovich, during his parents' lifetime and much to
their distress, had managed to fall in love with
the daughter of his landlord, a petty official
called Prepolovensky. She was an attractive and,
as they call it, well-educated girl; she used to
read the serious articles in the science column of
the newspapers. He married her as soon as the
period of mourning for his parents was over, and
leaving the civil service, where his father had
secured him a post through patronage, he started
to live very happily with his Masha, first in a
country villa near the Forestry Institute,
afterwards in Petersburg in a pretty little flat
with a clean staircase and a draughty drawing
room, and finally in the country where he settled
down and where in due course his son, Arkady, was
born. Husband and wife lived well and peacefully;
they were hardly ever separated, they read
together, they sang and played duets together on the
piano, she grew flowers and looked after the
poultry yard, he busied himself with the estate
and sometimes hunted, while Arkady went on growing
in the same happy and peaceful way. Ten years
passed like a dream. Then in 1847 Kirsanov's wife
died. He hardly survived this blow and his hair
turned grey in a few weeks; he was preparing to
travel abroad, if possible to distract his
thoughts . . . but then came
the year 1848.
He returned unwillingly to the country and after a
rather long penod of inactivity he began to take
an interest in improving his estate. In 1855 he
brought his son to the university and spent three
winters in Petersburg with him, hardly going out
anywhere and trying to make acquaintance with
Arkady's young comrades. The last winter he was
unable to go, and here we see him in May, 1859,
already entirely grey-haired, plump and rather
bent, waiting for his son, who had just taken his
university degree, as once he had taken it
himself.

The servant, from a feeling of propriety, and
perhaps also because he was anxious to escape from
his master's eye, had gone over to the gate and
was smoking a pipe. Nikolai Petrovich bowed his
head and began to stare at the crumbling steps; a
big mottled hen walked sedately towards him,
treading firmly with its thick yellow legs; a
dirty cat cast a disapproving look at him, as she
twisted herself coyly round the railing. The sun
was scorching; a smell of hot rye bread was wafted
from the dim entrance of the posting station.
Nikolai Petrovich started musing. "My son .
. . a graduate . . . Arkasha . . ."
kept on turning round in his mind; he tried to
think of something else, but the same thoughts
returned. He remembered his dead wife. "She
did not live to see it," he murmured sadly.
A plump blue pigeon flew on to the road and
hurriedly started to drink water from a puddle
near the well. Nikolai Petrovich began to watch
it, but his ear had already caught the sound of
approaching wheels . . .

"It sounds as if they're coming,
sir," announced the servant, emerging from
the gateway.

Nikolai Petrovich jumped up and fixed his eyes
on the road. A carriage appeared with three
posting horses abreast; inside it he caught a
glimpse of the band of a student's cap and the
familiar outline of a dear face . . .

"Arkasha! Arkasha!" cried Kirsanov,
and he ran out into the road, waving his arms . .
. A few moments later his lips were pressed to the
beardless dusty sunburnt cheek of the young
graduate.

Notes

Following notes are by Eric Eldred, 1998:

Fathers and Sons: the literal translaton of
the Russian title is "Fathers and Children,"
which is what the copytext uses. However, this title
is the traditional one.

Turgenev: 1818-1883. Russian author of many novels and some
plays and poems. After publishing this novel, lived mostly
in France and the West, following opera singer Mme Viardot,
her husband and children. Turgenev's works were translated
into French but it was not until about 1894 that Constance
Garnett first translated them into English. Turgenev's style
had a great effect on those writers who followed the
banners of naturalism or realism. He was praised by
Flaubert and Henry James and William Dean Howells.

1861: Turgenev wrote that he got the idea for this
book on the beach at Ventnor, England, in August, 1860,
but that Bazarov was
really based on a person he knew, a "Dr. D."
He finished writing it on his Russian estate in July of
1861, and published it in March, 1862, in The
Russian Herald, a magazine that had become conservative.
Before this book, liberal Russian critics had praised his
realistic depictions of the serfs. But they considered
his depiction of Bazarov here to be an attack on liberalism,
and reactionary Russian conservatives praised the author. Turgenev,
however, stated that he tried to obey aesthetic truth
rather than write political propaganda. The controversy
continues.

1859: carefully before the emancipation of the serfs,
February 19, 1861.

new improved generation: sarcastic of course, since the
adoption of Western fashions here is superficial. However,
Pyotr is a servant and really only serves as comic relief.

posting station: like a stage coach stop, where horses
were watered or changed and mail exchanged.

serfs: not really slaves as the African-Americans were,
but landless agricultural workers who owed labor to the
large landowners as in the feudal system.
The emancipation gave them some land
but made them earn wages.

farm: some liberal landowners anticipated the
liberation by starting up their own money system;
as seen here, it was a bit premature.